DIY Aerial Imaging Now a Reality

As Badger reports, the $95 DIY balloon mapping kit sold by the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, has several advantages over the typical aerial image found on Google Maps or Google Earth. For one, you can capture images at higher resolution. "At this distance," says Badger, "you can get down to the centimeter, enough to capture the dotted lines on a road, or the tiles on a roof." You can also update images as necessary to document changing conditions. 

"The whole idea is an ingenious mix of high and low tech, of rubber bands
and helium and open-source software (Public Labs also has a platform
called MapKnitter that will help
you stitch the images together into one big mosaic). But aside from its
basic techie appeal, this tool is trying to take map-making – for
centuries the province of people who are in charge – and give the rest
of us that power, too."